[1] He is an ethnohistorian, a Mayanist, a scholar of the conquest, colonization, and the African diaspora in the Americas, and a historian of popular music.
But he was schooled in England from the age of 8, spending ten boarding-school years first at Marsh Court in Hampshire and then at Wellington College, before going on to receive a BA degree, First Class with Honors, in Modern History from Oxford University in 1986.
He earned an MA in 1989 and a PhD in Latin American History from UCLA in 1992, studying under James Lockhart, and then held teaching positions at universities in Texas and Boston before taking up a tenured post at Penn State.
He appears regularly on TV documentaries, radio shows, and podcasts, discussing the Aztecs, Mayas, Columbus, and the Spanish conquistadors, and the history of rock and pop music.
[8] He is currently writing books on post-pop, on Elton John, on Christopher Columbus, and on early Belize (tentatively titled The Caye).